Russia to redeploy resources freed up by end of war in Ukraine, warns Finnish intelligence

Finland’s security and intelligence agency Supo warned on Tuesday that the threat posed by Russia is set to rise across Europe as a result of the end of the war in Ukraine — although it is unclear when such an end may come about.

“The end of the war in Ukraine will improve the ability of Russia to engage in hostile activity elsewhere in Europe as it pursues its political objectives by means both fair and foul,”  the Finnish intelligence agency warned in its annual national security overview.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago — initially intended to be a brief military operation capturing the capital city Kyiv — the Kremlin put the Russian economy on a war footing. As of 2025, the Kremlin has marked almost a third of Russia’s total government expenditure for defence.

These measures, compounded by labor shortages, high interest rates and Western sanctions, reportedly have left the country’s economy extremely strained and are causing concern to the Kremlin.

“Russia would like to restore trade relations with European countries,” stated the Supo overview. “Its key global objectives are to undermine support for Ukraine and to alleviate the current regime of sanctions.”

The agency warned that “Russia continues to prepare for a deepening confrontation with the West, and is striving to maintain instruments that it can resort to if necessary,” including “sabotage operations that are mainly linked to the GRU Russian military intelligence service.”

The targets of these operations “have little strategic significance as such” but are intended to “influence opinions and the general sense of public safety, while imposing a burden on public authorities.”

The U.S. is conducting bilateral peace negotiations with Moscow that have not included Ukraine, and has reportedly produced options papers for sanctions relief as part of an eventual peace deal.

Following an argument in the White House last week — widely characterised as an “ambush” of the Ukrainian president — President Donald Trump accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of not seeking peace “as long as he has America’s backing” in response to Zelensky telling the media that the end of the war was “very, very far away.”

During his first term in office, Trump was impeached for attempting to use U.S. military support for Ukraine to coerce Zelensky into investigating the son of his political rival Joe Biden.

The Trump administration has now again suspended the delivery of military aid to Ukraine in a move critics described as an attempt to force Kyiv’s capitulation either to Russia or to force the country to sign a mineral deal advocated by the White House.

The U.S. administration is seeking access to Ukraine’s natural resources as a way of recouping the cost of support previously provided by the Biden administration. “We’re going to get our money back,” Trump told a conservative political conference in February.

Without referencing the recent U.S. decision — which may have been made after the annual overview was drafted — Supo said Russia “may be considered to have partially succeeded” in its key goal of undermining support for Ukraine “as it has been able to effect constraints on military support provided by the West.”

Overall the Kremlin “is preparing for various hostile operations against Western countries, and also against Finland. Such preparations nevertheless do not indicate that any decision has been made to take such actions immediately,” stated Supo.

Although the agency assessed that Finland itself has “not yet become a focus of the intense influencing that has primarily targeted major EU Member States and countries with large Russian minorities or pro-Russia political parties” it warned “this will probably change when Russia is able to redeploy the resources that are currently tied up in Ukraine.”